Bicycles

A new bike-share program has launched in Manchester, making it yet another city, alongside Portsmouth, Hanover, and Laconia, to offer bike rentals at various locations around the city. And infrastructure modifications, including complete streets, which allow safe use for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, are popping up all over the state. Still, many cyclists, and drivers, do not understand how to co-exists on our roads. We'll look at the latest in road safety, bike sharing, and cyclist/pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

Changes are coming to the streets in Walpole Saturday, including new traffic patterns, bikeways and walkways. It's all temporary - part of an effort to show how relatively small design changes can create a safer space for cyclists and pedestrians of all ages.

"I grew up riding my bike pretty much everywhere," said Cheryl Mayberry, who sits on the town's select board. "These days, there's not a lot of safe places for parents and kids to get out and ride around or walk comfortably."

A bike share program in Manchester could be underway as early as June 1.

Carol Gayman is the engine behind the project. She lives in Manchester, where she rides her bike and works at the YMCA. Manchester is not known for its spending on public goods.

"We needed all private sponsorship dollars for this project to work in Manchester," Gayman said. After 18 months hustling for those sponsorships, Gayman says she’s "99.9 percent certain that as of May 2, it will get the nod from the full board of mayor and alderman."

Aphonia, flop sweat, mic fright. Call it what you will, stage fright can be crippling for some performers. On today’s show: a pianist delves into the history of performance anxiety, and her own struggle to overcome it

Then, between recent spikes in bicycle commuters and bike-friendly infrastructure, arguments over who owns the road are commonplace, but hardly new. We’ll take a look at the bicycle’s fraught history with pedestrians, automobiles and even horse-drawn carriages.

Plans to build a bike path in Portsmouth are moving forward and city officials say they will conduct more public meetings.

After the state Department of Transportation approves the city's engineering study, City Transportation Director Juliet Walker tells the Portsmouth Herald preliminary design work on the proposed bike path can begin.

The unlicensed New Hampshire driver charged with plowing into a group of bicyclists last year, killing two Massachusetts women, is set to plead guilty.

Darriean Hess is scheduled to plead guilty Monday to two counts each of manslaughter and second-degree assault.

Police say the 20-year-old Seabrook woman was ticketed for speeding Sept. 21, 2013. Eight hours later, she was speeding on the same road and under the influence of drugs when she ran into the cyclists in Hampton.

An unlicensed New Hampshire driver charged with driving into a group of bicyclists last year, killing two of them, is facing a Friday deadline to let a judge know if she will enter a guilty plea.

Related: Click here to see a photo gallery of the aftermath of the crash.

Police said 20-year-old Darriean Hess of Seabrook was speeding and under the influence of drugs when she ran into the bicyclists in Hampton. Hess was stopped for speeding in the same area hours earlier.

Lance Rake is Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Kansas and the creative force behind “The Semester Bicycle,” a sleek and durable bike made of bamboo grown just three blocks from an assembly shop in Greensboro, Alabama. He’s collaborating with community development organizations in Greensboro to create more than an innovative bike, but a new manufacturing model to pull a town in an economic standstill back into the race.

As more New Hampshire communities adopt bike-friendly policies, more Granite Staters are taking to two wheels instead of four, encouraged by programs such as "Complete Streets" and new rail trails. But along with expansion has come some tension -- with cars and pedestrians -- as well as debates over how scarce resources will be spent.

I was deep in western New York for the July fourth holiday. We had loads of fun and the weather was mostly great. The one sour note was not being able to find Wimbledon on the available television channels…we searched for Wimbledon and found live coverage of the Tour de France. In addition to having no interest in watching the race, I realized that I had no idea how to watch the Tour de France. I’m not alone, apparently because each year when the spotlight turns again to spandex, millions of Americans shrug and say “meh!”

You may have heard that the city of Concord is contemplating designs for a major overhaul of it’s downtown. Tonight, the Central New Hampshire bicycling coalition is hosting an event called Bike-toberfest at Red River Theatres in Concord. The idea is to bring people together to talk about how bike transportation could fit into the design, and to view some short films featuring bicycles.

It’s been an uneasy relationship, with cyclists saying cars rule the roads, and drivers saying cyclists flout the law. In recent years, these groups have made some headway when it comes to relations, with more bike lanes and more education on avoiding collisions. But conflicts still flare up and many say there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Selectmen in the Seacoast town of Rye have voted to require cyclists to ride single file on all roads in the town. The ordinance passed despite opposition from the community, and it also requires pedestrians to walk single file on Rye roads.

Similar rules are in place in Newington and Newcastle. Supporters of single file ordinances say that the narrow, winding roads on the seacoast don’t have space for two cyclists abreast.

The rule became a flashpoint after Rye’s chief of police put up a traffic sign that read, “Roads are for riding not chatting. Ride single file.”

Tonight selectmen in Rye will hear from the town's lawyer about the legality of a new cycling ordinance in that town. Cycling - both for commuting and recreation - is on the rise, but so too is the number of cars on the road, and recently on the seacoast, tensions between cyclists and drivers have flared.

When thieves stole Patrick Symmes’ commuter bicycle in broad daylight, it’s not a stretch to say that he snapped. Late at night, he’d watch the surveillance tape again and again… plotting sweet revenge against the two men who’d methodically and nonchalantly pilfered his blue Novara Metro hybrid. Seven bikes and three cities later, Patrick has finally gotten his revenge…sort of.